The invention is based on an apparatus for opening up folded boxes. Such an apparatus is known, for example, from German Offenlegungsschrift No. 27 20 902, and has a suction gripper that swings back and forth between a magazine and a conveyor apparatus of a box-making machine. The machine removes one flat-folded box at a time from the magazine and draws the box onto a conveyor apparatus, all in a single motion. A stationary shunt presses against an abutting folded edge of the folded box being carred past it, thus opening up the box and setting it upright. This very simply embodied apparatus functions reliably for common shapes of folded boxes and for an output of up to 250 boxes per minute. However, reliable opening up of the folded boxes is no longer assured when the boxes are relatively flat or tall, or if the material making up the box is not very rigid. An embodiment of the known apparatus is accordingly desired with which folded boxes having a problematical ratio of width to height can be opened up and transferred to a conveyor apparatus and with which it is possible to achieve a high output.
In another apparatus for opening up folded boxes, known for example from U.S. Pat. No. 3,533,333, reliable opening up of the folded boxes is attained in that the folded boxes removed from the magazine are first brought before a suction holder, which by means of a vacuum firmly holds the flat-folded boxes on the side opposite the side to be engaged by the suction gripper for opening the box, until such time as a suction gripper is moved back and forth to engage the other side of that box and has opened it by making a movement away from the suction holder. However, this known apparatus is not capable of a very high output, because a pushing device is required for moving the flat-folded boxes to the suction holder, pushing the lowermost folded box lengthwise out of the magazine using driver devices. The sliding of the folded box on support rails and the friction between it and the other boxes remaining in the magazine mean that a high transfer speed is not possible, and the support rails can also cause scratch marks on folding boxes whose surfaces may be coated with expensive materials.
In order to avoid friction between the folding box being pushed out of a magazine and the box next to it in the stack, a similar apparatus, known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,074,326, has a suction-type removal device, which pulls out the lowermost folding box in the magazine transversely to the plane of the folded box and sets it down in the delivery pusher. The structure of this known apparatus is very expensive, because an additional drive mechanism is required for the suction-type removal device.